


The Tree By The River

by Cluegirl



Series: The Moirae Set [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:30:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape finds a shrine, and a mystery</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tree By The River

It had been Lily who’d taught Severus to fly. One turn on a broom, and she had realized she didn’t need a swing set to sling her out of gravity’s hold. She had summarily decided she didn’t need a broom either. She’d already flown on her own, after all, so she knew it had to be possible! And so she set her mind to the task, flush with certainty and the determination of one who had not grown up knowing that it could not be done.

Only once had Severus teased her about the futility of her efforts – within the week, Lily had dragged him out behind the lake to prove him wrong. And once his dignity had recovered from the mortification of having been thus shown up, she’d been ready to teach him the knack.

It had taken Severus two years to manage it, and more beyond that to master flight with nothing to support him but his own skin. He held the trick as a treasured secret, a covenant between them that Lily never, ever taught the trick to another, even after he had lost her forever. It had been a black day indeed, when the Dark Lord had pried it from his mind. Only the desperate need to keep hidden his complicity in Dumbledore’s murder had soothed his aching heart at the precious secret’s theft.

But Voldemort had stolen far more important things from him than that one trifling memory, of course. Severus had, perforce, resigned himself to the private betrayal, and with his keenest Slytherin guile, had done what he could to spin it to his advantage. It was, after all, just another private joy sacrificed on the altar of War, wasn’t it? Just a shiny, useless toy to be put aside now that he was no longer anything remotely resembling a child. He told himself Lily would probably understand.

In three years since the war, since that black night when his peers had driven him from Hogwarts, Severus had not used the trick. He wouldn’t even have used it the night of Potter’s return to the school, had he not still carried the burden of Dumbledore’s last charge – the critical, awful message that Potter, and no other, could hear. Then he had died, bleeding the message from every pore while staring into the boy’s too-familiar green eyes. And then he’d awoken again, dragged himself to safety more out of habit than any desire for survival. And the thought of leaving the ground had not even occurred to Severus since then. Penance, or black association, or plain weariness – any of them could have been to blame. Severus had not questioned it too deeply. He’d had other things to think about.

Now, though, with _Felix Felices_ singing through his veins, Severus did not think twice about taking to the air, gliding silent and swift as a breath-cloud on the grimy Yorkish wind until he spotted the gold and red and leather gleam of his own personal _bete-noire_. The sight drew him up short though, an unpleasant, bristling curl from the thing inside his chest to see how low the young man slouched in that tiny swingset’s embrace. As though Harry Potter had shed none of that great, intangible weight that had borne him down and worn him to shuffling gristle in the forest of Dean.

Potter bent low over his knees, hands knit as though the twine of his fingers was all that stopped him holding his head up with them, one foot toeing the dust to keep his body swaying over the pit ground in by a million grubby plimsolls before him. His hair, grown long now, but still unruly, shadowed his eyes, and Severus could just see the blue tint of a shave put off too long on the strong angle of his jaw. He was speaking -- mumbling, more likely, as of old, he’d had a tendency to do -- facing the old pine tree. Severus didn’t bother wondering to whom he spoke. That much was obvious.

He drew himself closer, directly over the boy’s head – long years of spying had taught him with a certainty that almost no one ever looked UP when they suspected they might be watched. But the wind’s voice was louder than the boy’s, and there was just that wariness in Potter’s set shoulders that made Severus unwilling to risk a charm that would let him listen more closely.

The wary look, the too-casual stretch, the disingenuously casual slouch toward the backside of the shaggy pine, all spoke plain to eyes which had studied the boy’s every mannerism for nearly a decade. Potter was not as distracted as he pretended, nor quite as oblivious. The beast in Severus’ breast took some satisfaction of that, and still more when, drifting over the pine tree’s skirts, he realized that the boy had given him the slip – and wasn’t that an odd thing to smile about? Still, he did it. Potter had learned stealth, and Severus wasn’t above assuming that lesson was due, in some measure, to his own diligence.

He settled to the ground in a welter of robe and cloak and heavy woolen muffler, thinking idly that he might as well have a look round the old play park now that Potter had quit it. But the frozen ground betrayed him as he came to earth on the narrow rind between tree and riverbank slope, and Severus found himself pitching wildly to the side, skidding on icy mud, and flailing for any grip to save himself the tumble. The tree branch was slick, thin, and hoary with frost, but it was enough to save Snape’s balance and dignity.

And as he used it to haul himself back to level footing, the branch’s swaying about revealed a glimmer of blue light from underneath.

_Hello…_

He pushed the branches aside, and slipped into the old tree’s embrace just in time to see Potter stand, turn in place, and disapparate with a muted pop. The mounded red needles where he had stood whiffed into the air for a second in his wake, and then settled. Meanwhile, Severus stood, dumbfounded at the sight of the boy’s little shrine.

He went to it and knelt, examining the collection with nostalgia curdling in his throat. There, the other half of the photograph he had stolen – its mate, from which Lily herself smiled and waved, tucked into the corner shelf in his bedroom, where Severus kept his own shrine to her loss. Just behind the torn photo, a graduation plaque from the Aurory of the Ministry of Magic leaned against the tree, Potter’s name inscribed at the bottom in a gleam of bronze. Here, a woman’s ring, too simply elegant to have been cheap, nestled between two presentation boxes in black velvet… two boxes? The pressure in Severus’ breast urged him to look – demanded it in tones of hunger so stark that he found he’d taken the nearest box to hand before he had even consciously considered doing so. And then, the broad weight in his palm, he could not force himself to set it aside unopened.

The golden medallion gleamed a queasy sort of green in the blue light of Potter’s conjured flames, making its emblazoned owl look a bit seasick as Severus turned it to the light to read the parchment lining the lid. “ _Presented this day to Harry James Potter, in celebration of valor and heroism beyond the call of his duty, and in gratitude for his sacrifice to the good of the Wizarding World; Order of Merlin First Class._ ”

The box was dusty, its velvet all but matted flat with a year’s worth of Yorkish weather. A brief examination of its sides and top revealed soot, sap, bird lime and spiderwebs all contributed to the patina of neglect. In all likelihood, the medal had lain there in the old tree’s shelter for a year or more, untouched. Unmissed. Unwanted?

The bluebell flames danced a little, drawing Severus’ eye to the other, nearly identical box.

His breast tightened. Yes. Yes, he did have to look at that one too. He refused to think about why. His hand only shook a tiny bit as he set the first box back in its place to take the second up. The medal was gold. The owl in full, glorious spread: _Order of Merlin, First Class,_ he read.

And then he read his name.

His own name, complete with the loathed middle-name he’d only ever heard from his mum’s lips when he was in for it as a boy. The second medal was his, and for a moment his shock was so profound that Severus nearly dropped it. He thumped to a seat in the redolent, cushiony needles, half prepared to indulge in hilarity of the helpless-laughter variety. But then the steady light of the bluebell flames jumped, shuddered inside their transfigured prison as though terrified of some unseen predator.

The coiling pressure under Severus’ breastbone tightened, and he found himself drawing his wand as the bluebell flames flared, gasped, and struggled to shine. He snapped the box closed, got his feet properly under him just as all at once, the flames went out, plunging the hidden shrine into blackness.

Severus was turning in place before he’d even realized that he didn’t know where he was going.


End file.
